In the aftermath of World War I, France buried the tomb of an Unknown Soldier under the Arc de Triomphe in Paris. This national military monument is dedicated to the memory of all fallen soldiers during the Great War.

100 years later, we made this symbol of War, a universal symbol of Peace for the younger generations by giving a face to the Unknown Soldier. A face composed of 30,000 men, women, soldiers, nurses or civilians, winners and losers, regardless of their nationality or their origins: the Unknown Face.

This face took the form of an interactive and digital work permanently exhibited in the galleries of the Historial.

10 months were needed to give life to this colossal project combining technology and the duty of remembrance. To manage collecting more than 30.000 portraits, we were able to count on the help of museums, historians, collectors and archives from all around the world.

The Unknown Face is the authentic result of our algorithm. Our technology allowed us to recompose missing parts of several photographs in order to match them to the rest of the pictures. We also made sure that the portrait would not go under any retouching or post-production altering phase, so as to crystallize its raw emotion like a real artwork. We met an unbelievable challenge, as it is difficult to link the Unknown Face to a specific nationality or local origin.

The portrait was revealed at The Historial of the Great War at Péronne, as a unique and immersive installation. Visitors were able to skim through the dozens of thousands of faces which together through a leap-motion technology, constitute the piece. By using their hands, visitors could scroll through the lists of portraits. We also thought about everyone who couldn’t be on location to live this experience and created a dedicated digital platform to uncover the portrait.

In only a few months, the website was able to gather one of the most important collections of portraits from the Great War. Still today, we keep on receiving daily contributions from all around the world.

Thanks to this system, the Unknown Face keeps evolving day by day with pictures being added to the database. 6 months after being revealed, the Unknown Face has slightly changed around the mouth and the superciliary arch.